This week, our partnership with game criticism site Critical Distance brings us picks from Kris Ligman on topics including nanotechnology, the Twine Revolution, game narrative as improvisational theater, and more.

In the year 2148, commenters on Brainy Gamer discovered the remains of an ancient spacefaring civilization. In the decades that followed, these mysterious artifacts revealed startling new blog topics, enabling travel to new critical heights. The basis for this incredible technology was a force that controlled the very fabric of space, time and the ludodecahedron.

They called it the greatest discovery in game critic history.

The civilizations of the blogosphere call it:

THIS WEEK IN VIDEOGAME BLOGGING

In this adventure you play Commander Kris Ligman, the galaxy's most desk-bound human Spectre. Press [Spacebar] to skip this narrative flavor text we worked so hard on at any time. Go on, just try it, see if we care.

Right now, the fear that big-budget games about women won't sell is self-fulfilling. Developers are afraid to make and properly market big games with female protagonists out of a fear that they don't sell, but if developers don't make and properly market those games, they don't have a chance to sell. It's time for industry leaders to abandon the antiquated notions and tired excuses they sometimes trot out when talk turns to female protagonists.

Also on Kotaku, we overhear Evan Narcisse in conversation with David Brothers on how to increase racial representation both within games and in the development industry. Press [Left-Click] to join conversation.

EPISODE 2: IT’S A GREAT BIG WORLD OUT THERE

Critical biotic commando John Brindle of The New Statesman suggests that while the predicted epoch of top-down political games as propaganda appears to have failed to materialize, grassroots, bottom-up political games like September 12 and Cart Life represent a growing genre.

Anyway– while it's no doubt a familiar approach to some of her readers out there, Commander Ligman still appreciated this analysis by Push Select's Mark Jensen using Final Fantasy VII to illustrate several philosophical tenets of existentialism.

EPISODE 4: A NEW HOPE

Seriously, Joker. Stop.

Elsewhere, back with the plot, Commander Ligman discovers a mighty entity that must be destroyed before it consumes another race of synthetics: the Bit Creature! It's already claimed Gavin Craig, who this week turns his gaze on a particular scene in Heavy Rain which not only misdirects the player but breaks the rules of the gameplay (and possibly space-time) entirely:

We’re used to and know how to read unreliable narrators in books and film. We’re even familiar with unreliable characters in games. The “would you kindly” revelation in BioShock is jarring, but it’s also frequently discussed as a high point in game narrative and not as evidence of a broken game. With some very rare (and usually clearly signaled — think of the Scarecrow sequences in Batman: Arkham Asylum) exceptions, what the player sees is treated as objectively reliable. It becomes difficult to imagine functioning in most games if what you see isn’t what, for the game’s purposes, is really there. In Heavy Rain, however, just for a moment, the camera itself becomes an unreliable narrator.

[L]ongform improv comedy involves actors cooperating to “find the game” — to find the core of a joke. Each actor makes “offers” to expand upon a premise and move action forward, hopefully toward a funny destination, and usually, actors err on always accepting offers (”saying yes”) and building upon it since “blocking” offers frustrates your scene partners. However, it's very possible to “say yes” to a premise while still “blocking” the “game.”

[The] realism exists in this kind of ever-shifting bubble around the player. The area you see looks and feels as real as we can make it, but the relationships between things dilate and compress to accommodate a good gameplay experience. That mountain in the distance would likely be 10-20 miles away based on the amount of atmospheric color shifting going on, but in the game you could be there in a matter of minutes without even hitting the sprint button.

It all kind of hangs together because our brains aren’t great at processing long-term experiences at that same immediate level – realizing that it didn’t take you nearly long enough to reach the peak requires active reflection, and the game doesn’t really give you any reason to reflect on that particular experience.

back before I learnt how to make games, I was really passionate about my 3D art (it was originally my intention to never program at all, I was all about the visual art) I hung out on deviantArt and shared my work and it was cool. but then tools appeared that made certain things easier; poser, terragen and similar software let people make 3D models without even requiring an understanding of the 3D building blocks; faces, vertices etc.

I was seriously miffed, I had worked crazy hard to make character models, and these people had the nerve to submit poser models alongside mine as though they were equal? it wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair. I had worked hard and these people had barely worked at all.

Ladies and Gentlemen, if you find yourself thinking like this you are an asshole, and you are in the middle of a tantrum.

EPISODE 6: RUN AWAY! RUN AWAAAAY!

Great. Who drove the Mako right into a Thresher Maw nest?

Known Rampant Coyote associate Lars Doucet was spotted writing this guest post with a thoughtful look at the mechanic of escaping battles. Just like we're doing, right now. Reverse, reverse!

By 1988, Tetris was the highest-selling computer game in the U.S., available for purchase on the Commodore 64, Super Famicom, and Apple II and IBM personal computers. The question of who owned the rights – and on which devices – was still hotly contested, particularly between Atari, who acquired it from Microsoft, and Nintendo, who acquired it through Spectrum Holobyte and began distributing it through a publisher named – if you can believe it – Bullet Proof Software. Coincidence? Perhaps. In any case, Bullet Proof worked hard to secure the rights to Tetris across multiple devices. They were hoping to prepackage the insidious little game with their upcoming portable handheld console, called a Game Boy. Facilitated by this little machine, Tetris would grow even further, spreading beyond the arcades, living rooms and office cubicles where it was once constrained. The great big Tetris board called Earth was starting to get dangerously full. And all of the pieces were red.

President Reagan sought to fight Communism with his “Star Wars” initiative, but the Soviet Union countered with a gambit out of Star Trek, a Kobayashi Maru that we were never meant to solve. An unbeatable scenario whose purpose was not to teach us, but to leach us, to drain us dry of enterprise and rational thought, to strand us in a wasteland of wasted hours.

Sigl [...] wonders what it might have taken to make it truly terrifying: Vulnerability, Pruning (of locations and NPCs) and Unreliable Perception, something to turn it into a subjective body horror experience a la Cronenberg, with constant doubts as to your own health and sanity.

Okay, that's enough, and Kommandantin Ligman's German voice actress sounds weird. Let's switch back over to English-language pieces for now.

EPISODE 11: SHUT IT DOWN

We must've missed some intervening DLC chapter which explained the transition here, but it seems that Commander Ligman's subordinate Cameron Kunzelman has gone and made the actual Citizen Kane of games, so we can all go home early. Nevermind that Reaper thing, we guess.

Still here, huh? In that case, press [Shift+Spacebar] for New TWIVGB Plus. Enjoy the roundup again with all your EXP and equipment! Just try to romance someone other than Garrus this time, okay? We're getting concerned.